Anderson, Mark Louden (1895–1961), forester, was born 16 April 1895, son of the Rev. J. C. Anderson and Jeanie Anderson (née Boyd), of Kinneff, Scotland. His university career was interrupted by service in the British army (1914–19), where he won an MC (1918); but he graduated from Edinburgh University with a B.Sc. (1919), and was awarded a D.Sc. (1924). He was a research officer with the Forestry Commission in Britain (1919–31), and appears also to have worked in forestry in Ireland in 1926–8. On leaving the commission, he moved to Ireland as a forestry inspector till 1934, then chief inspector and director of forestry (1934–46). From 1946 to 1951 he was a lecturer in and deputy director of the Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford; he then became professor of forestry in Edinburgh University (1951–61).
During his time in Ireland he greatly increased planting and road-making, and was noted for his advocacy of planting hardwoods along with conifers in what came to be known as ‘Anderson groups’. He organised the first Irish census of woodlands, and encouraged the use of lodgepole pine in Irish forestry, as well as trying eucalpytus plantings. He and the minister for lands, Joseph Connolly (qv), did not always see eye to eye on forestry policy; in particular, Anderson did not support the minister's plans for afforestation in the Gaeltacht. He was founding president (1943–4) of the Society of Irish Foresters, and was well known for his publications, which included The natural woodlands of Britain and Ireland (1932), The selection of tree species (1950; 2nd ed. 1961), and translations from Scandinavian languages; he also edited The James Carmichael collection of proverbs in Scots (1957). He died 9 September 1961 in Edinburgh. He married (1918) Mabel Watkins; they had two sons and a daughter.